With merciful candour, and a lifetime of forming young Australian souls in our holy Faith behind him, a Marist Brother lays it on the line to his fellow Aussies. Essential, provocative reading.

An Open Letter to Catholics

To our Archbishops, Bishops, Clergy
and
Concerned Laity

 

14 December 2004

Your several Reverences and fellow Catholics,

I recently received an appeal for contributions to the Marian Eucharistic Alliance, aka St. Gabriel Communications. (I am putting a curse on the source of the rumour that I have won the lottery a few times.) The appeal reported Archbishop Hickey [Perth] as referring to A Catholic school where not one boy or girl in Year 12 went to Mass. He said, "This floored me, I had no idea how bad the situation had become."

It was hardly news. Twenty years' research by the late Brother Marcellin Flynn had recorded what was happening, and it is now many years since 'Bob' Santamaria was one of those spelling it out: "Let us not conclude our assessment with the monumental absurdity that, as Catholics vote with their feet and empty once-filled churches, the Holy Spirit is renewing what is visibly ceasing to exist."

But who was listening then? Father John Parsons: "An extraordinary number of Catholics pay so little intellectual attention to doctrinal matters that they are still unaware that anything much has been happening."

True, but it was more than doctrinal matters that suffered the inattention.

For the 'extraordinary number' there was no problem, of course.

For others, well, our Education Officers and our teachers were professionals, there had been crises and glitches before, the Church was to last to the end of time, so where's the problem? Of course there was the odd skeleton or two in the cupboard, such as the R.E. teacher telling a confrere, "I don't believe half of this crap", and the non-Catholic mother able to say of her non-Catholic son's Catholic school, "It's no big deal, there's not much dogma."

The Gabriel Communications brochure correctly reports Mass attendance as at best 15 percent, but further shock awaits the Archbishop. Many even of that 15 percent are counterfeits. In The Banished Heart author Dr. Geoffrey Hull explains:"Most Catholics today - ordinary believers as well as the theologically literate - have adopted a 'self-service' approach to the beliefs and practices of their Church, accepting some and rejecting others on the basis of private judgment. It is an approach that is quintessentially Protestant. Among those Catholics who unhesitatingly rise to join the Communion queue at a modern Mass are many who rarely fulftl their Sunday obligation, who have not been to confession in years, who deny the existence of Satan and hell, who believe that women no less than men are called to the priesthood, and who scorn official Church teaching on sexual morality."

The truth is that the revolution that has taken place in the thinking and practice of the Catholic 'faithful', has followed the revolution that has occurred in Catholic teaching over the last three or four decades.

A brochure I received this week is a breath of fresh air in that it at least acknowledges the deplorable and critical state of the Church.

It proposes a remedial project in the form of New Apologetics By Mail. The effort is commendable as far as it goes, but it falls short of a solution in that it counters only one of the causes of the debacle, namely ignorance of the Catholic faith. Commendable as that endeavour is, its promoters should be aware that if they are going to present the full Catholic faith they will be facing opposition from within the Church. More precisely and sadly, from within the Vatican.

That last statement will not surprise those who have kept in touch with what has been happening. The 'inattentives' will, of course, find it 'outrageous'. Patience! They should hold their fire until some of the facts they have been missing are aired herein.

A concerned Mr. Dixon recently claimed that to increase Mass attendance the Church 'must invent and adopt completely new approaches' (Sydney Catholic Weekly). In the above brochure Archbishop Hickey speaks of 'new initiatives that we have not even thought of yet'.

I humbly, respectfully, but confidently submit that both are mistaken.

What the Church needs is not inventions and new initiatives, but the resumption of old strategies that 'worked' in the past. I refer to those simple but highly successful strategies used by the Apostles:

Each of the above could be the subject of a book, but the briefer treatment here has a better prospect of being read.

Strategy 1.

A Victorian parish priest has written, "Our young people are religious illiterates, pleasant, engaging, and thoroughly pagan in outlook. I'm sure God will be gentle with them". Translation: The fault isn't all theirs. The priest said nothing about God being gentle with the shepherds responsible for the illiteracy.

'Whole packet' means what it says. Aren't we supposed to be passing on to the young the faith that comes to us from the Apostles? What we have been passing on is a heavily edited version of it. If the Church wants to climb above that 15 percent, it has to resume throwing the whole book at us - without apology to either the faithful or to the so-called separated brethren - as it used to do when Mass attendance was 65 percent.

Included would be the doctrines that have been virtually mothballed: the one true Church, the keys of the kingdom of heaven, hell, purgatory, the 'four last things'.

Is it true or isn't it that the bishops have stood silently by while 'requiem' Masses have celebrated the 'life' of the deceased, whereas such Masses used to be, and should be, for the repose of the soul of the deceased? Is it true or isn't it that bishops themselves have said such Masses, which are a covert denial of the doctrine of Purgatory?

Classroom and pulpit have been silent about hell. When novelist David Lodge wrote, "Around 1970 Catholics ceased to believe in hell", writer Piers Paul Read added, "Not only did the laity cease to behave as if there were a credible danger of damnation, but the clergy ceased to preach it."

When a child asked a teacher about hell she was told, "Hell is not as important as it was. Don't worry about it." The ebb and flow of Catholic doctrine!

What that child - and every Catholic - should know is that the doctrine of hell is as important as that of the Resurrection. Seeing that without it the serving of God becomes optional, where is the mystery in that Year 12 student not going to Mass? They are just exercising their option, and the Church is simply reaping what it has been sowing for all too long.

Is there somewhere a bishop so dishonest as to stand up and tell me the Church has been teaching for the past three decades, exactly what it taught when I stumbled into the Church 72 years ago?

Strategy 2.

Few, even of the 15 percent Mass goers, realise that both the new liturgy and the new ecumenism are products of the desire to please the separated brethren.

This second policy requires honesty and courage. The Church's record in the first - honesty - is hardly brilliant: ' An archbishop lied in emphatically denying he sought to suppress a sub-committee's report, while doing exactly that, and succeeding in the suppression.

• Another archbishop wanted a school principal to write a reference for a student who had been expelled for bad conduct.
• An archbishop dishonestly denied his intervention in the editorial policy of his diocesan journal.
• A diocesan journal indignantly denied that there was any diocesan policy as regards support for the Labor Party or Democratic Labor Party, but fell silent, when threatened with publication of damning evidence to the contrary.
• A pope lied in claiming the new liturgy was in accord with the directions of Vatican Council II. The Liturgical Commission had ignored the Council document. Cardinal Oddi, liturgist Fr. Louis Bouyer and philosopher Jean Guitton told the truth.
• Even now the Church lacks the honesty to tell the faithful the truth that the new liturgy was formulated not out of pastoral care for the faithful, but to make it acceptable to Protestants. That truth came from its architect Fr. Annibale Bugnini, and was confirmed by Jean Guitton in 1993. The Church is consistently silent about the fact that Pope Paul's liturgical Commission was assisted by six Protestant ministers in the formulation of the new liturgy. This kind of performance recalls the words of the late Fr. Bryan Houghton: "Close inspection of many of our reforms reveals the underlying assumption that the laity are halfwits."
• The Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship lied when it claimed there had been nothing wrong with the original version of the notorious Article 7 of the General Instruction on the Roman Missal. That version had defined the Mass as an assembly, with no mention of sacrifice, transubstantiation or Real Presence. It was glaringly un-Catholic. (According to Cardinal Journot Pope Paul admitted he had signed the original document without reading it.)
• In 1994, when 80 percent or more of Catholics were no longer attending Mass, the Vatican Secretariat of State lied that "the new liturgy had been received and applied with fruit by the great majority of the faithful."

• The smother-up surrounding Pope John Paul's error in giving Communion to non-Catholic Prime Minister Tony Blair, is all too typical. If Communion was not given, a top-level denial could have been issued from the Vatican. Such would have been a lie, so a low-level authority "could not comment on the Prime Minister's private life." Fr. Bryan Houghton's 'underlying assumption' again.

Wanted now is an authority in the Church with the honesty to admit the dismal failure of the liturgical reform, and to admit that Pius XII was right in warning such reform would be suicidal.

Is a still lower Mass attendance required to convince the Church its persistence with the new Mass amounts to flogging a dead horse?

WHAT THEN?

For those who want innovations there is one ready made. Without interfering with the Novus Ordo Mass, the Traditional Latin Mass could be restored, not just tolerated as it has been – barely - but given the same recognition as the current Mass. Of the many things that deserve to be said in favour of restoring the Latin Mass, time and space permit only a few:

• Cardinal Ratzinger: "I am of the opinion to be sure, that the old rite should be granted much more generously to all those who desire it. It's impossible to see what could be dangerous or unacceptable about that. A community is calling its very being into question when it suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and highest possession is strictly forbidden, and when it makes the longing for it seem downright indecent.... Currently, anyone who defends the validity of that liturgy or who practices it is treated like a leper: all tolerance ceases. The like has never been seen before in the Church's entire history. By adopting this attitude towards them they despise the Church's entire past."
• It was extraordinary to have Cardinal Pell [Sydney] recently claiming it easier to hear God in the sound of silence. He could not have been more right, but the extraordinary aspect is that Cardinal Pell must know that silent prayer is characteristic of the Latin Mass the Church walked away from on its way to 15 percent attendance at its very vocal Novus Ordo Mass. The truth is the Latin Mass was God-centred, the Novus Ordo Mass is man-centred, a fact appropriately symbolised by the priest facing his congregation.
• A 24-year-old U.S. student, disgusted with the innovations that passed for Mass in her local Church, was advised to travel some distance to a Traditional Mass. She did so and later wrote: "The most profound and moving experience for me was receiving Holy Communion while kneeling." She had not previously even heard of an altar rail, nor did she know that kneeling for Communion was previously universal. She added: "I can't believe I have been Catholic my entire life and have never experienced anything like this before. I plan to continue going to the Traditional Mass (three hours out of my Sunday or not.) How can I not after this experience?"
• Cardinal Ratzinger: "It may well be that kneeling is alien to modern culture - insofar as it has a culture - for this culture has turned away from the faith and no longer knows the One before whom kneeling is the right, indeed the intrinsically necessary gesture. The man who learns to believe learns also to kneel; and a faith or a liturgy no longer familiar with kneeling would be sick at the core. Where it has been lost kneeling must be restored."
• How can it be denied that Communion-in-the-hand was a major factor in the decline in reverence towards the Blessed Sacrament, for which, in 1980, Pope John Paul II apologised on behalf of the hierarchy? Fr. Joseph Vandeberg, (West Union, MN) reports: "The new Mass seems to lack a sense of the sacred. I am surprised by the lack of reverence towards the Host. I have found consecrated Hosts left-behind in the pews, on the floor and pasted in hymnals."

WHAT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH THREW AWAY

Following the televising of Pontifical High Mass from St. Anne's Cathedral, Leeds, on January 10th 1954, Cardinal Heenan wrote:

"Although I realised that the Mass had made television history, I was astonished by the volume of correspondence which resulted. Telegrams began to arrive an hour or two after Mass. Letters poured in the next morning and throughout the week. I was accustomed to the so-called 'fan-mail' from the many BBC programs in which I had taken part during the previous decade, but I had never received correspondence so large and varied as this. The most surprising feature was the absence of criticism, and the number of appreciative letters from non-Catholics .... A letter from Cheshire aptly illustrates the general attitude of correspondents: 'I am not a Catholic, but may I express my gratitude to you for the most beautiful and moving service of High Mass from your Cathedral Church. For we who have found it hard to believe, your service came as an inspiration shattering in its impact. It seemed to reveal a great truth so long hidden from us. God bless you Father for the light you have shown us.'

"... A friend working in the BBC was on duty that day, and was so full of enthusiasm that he could not wait until he reached home, and wrote from Broadcasting House: "I can't stop myself from writing this note. This morning's televised Mass and sermon must mark a turning point. The whole thing was moving and magnificent in the extreme... Father Agnellus' commentary, being a strict account, must have made the ceremony meaningful as well as beautiful.... a lot of superlatives in one paragraph, but then it was high time you vindicated your logical view that Catholic ritual needs no watering down on the BBC. What a thundering vindication this was!" - From A Crown of Thorns

PLEASING GOD RATHER THAN MEN TAKES COURAGE

Courage is needed to stand by unpopular truth. Was not that how the martyrs died? Cardinal Ratzinger knew he was stating the plain truth when he admitted the radical new liturgy had done extremely serious damage to the Church; but he also knew the statement would take off like a lead balloon with the many clinging to the idea that the Church had got things right with the novelties that followed Vatican Council II.

THE CURRENT ECUMENISM

The revolutionary new liturgy was not the only change that has seriously damaged the Church. The radical new ecumenism had the same purpose as the new liturgy, to please men - the separated brethren - rather than God.

Whether or not it has moved the faithful closer to the separated brethren, it has certainly moved them further from God. It has inflicted on the Church even more damage than has the liturgical revolution. In essence it has been the virtual suppression of a doctrine as old as the Church, that of the one true Church. That suppression has contributed even more than the new liturgy to reducing Mass attendance to its current 15 percent.

The Church's ecumenism prior to Vatican Council II was an open book, proclaimed in Mortalium Animos by Pius XI in 1928, and in the Instruction on the Ecumenical Movement from the Holy Office in 1949. Its principles were:

• The Catholic Church possesses the fullness of Christ.
• Christian unity is not to be pursued by means of assimilation between different confessions of faith, nor by adjusting Catholic doctrine to the teachings of other denominations.
• True union between the churches can come about only by the return of the separated brethren to the true Church of God.
• Separated brethren who rejoin the Catholic Church lose nothing of the truth to be found in their former denominations, but retain it in its completed and perfected context.

The new ecumenism violates all four principles, without showing one of them to be wrong.

On the other hand Professor Romano Amerio, a peritus at Vatican Council II and lifelong student of the Church, warns where the new ecumenism is taking us:

"The specific character of Christianity is being lost, and Catholicism is being dissolved into a combined universal religion, of which all particular religions are regarded as valid expressions, because, on this view, religions are simply the expressions of the different cultures in which they exist."

In other words, the new ecumenism is moving towards the One-World church anticipated and condemned by St. Pius X.

The following are samples of the new ecumenism in operation:

• Catholics must give up their confessional arrogance. (i.e. their idea of the one true Church.)
• God works through other religions. (i.e., God doesn't mind heresies.) God wills other religions. (i.e., God wills error.)
• Every religion has the right to regard itself as the true religion.
• "It would be erroneous to consider the faithful believer of another religion as someone to be converted"- Bishop Tauran.
• The Secretariat for non-believers was certainly not created with the intention of proselytising among non-believers.
• The function of religion is not to make conversions, but to make Catholics better Catholics, Jews better Jews, Muslims better Muslims, etc. (Objective or revealed truth is no longer a goal.)
• Jews do not need conversion or baptism; the Old Law is still valid for them.
• Protestants are no worse off than Catholics in reaching salvation.